A bashful and modest person can be called verecund, an adjective that comes from the Latin verecundus, which is derived from vereri (meaning to respect, be in awe of or fear). Vereri comes from the Indo-European root wer-, ‘to watch out for,’ which is also the source of revere, aware, wary and award. A rude and uncultured person can be described as an incult, a word that comes from the Latin incultus, made up of in, meaning ‘not,’ and cultus, meaning ‘to cultivate’. The deep root is the Latin colere, ‘tend, cultivate’, also the source of the word culture. In late Middle English, the sense was ‘cultivation of the soil’ and in the early sixteenth century, this led to ‘cultivation of the mind, faculties and manners’.

A philodox is a dogmatic person who loves his or her own opinion. It originated from the Greek philodoxos made up of philo-, ‘love,’ and doxa, ‘glory or opinion’. A brainiac is a very intelligent person. It is taken from the 1950s’ super intelligent alien villain in the Superman comic strip and is a blend of brain and maniac. Given the way the world is shrinking, many people are going to turn polyglots. Made up of poly-, ‘many’ and ‘glotta’, ‘tongue or language’, polyglot refers to the person who is conversant in many languages.

The word quixotic is an exceedingly idealistic, unrealistic and impractical person. It comes from the Spanish novelist Cervantes’ famous novel Don Quixote that had as hero, the eponymous knight errant who was so steeped in the silly notions of chivalry of his age that he sallied forth to right wrongs and help the downtrodden, in his own simple way. Zany is an adjective that generates interest. Actually a noun, it is used as both noun and adjective. It can be used to label anyone amusingly unconventional, idiosyncratic or eccentric. It has been moulded from the French zani, taking off from the Venetian form of Gianni or Giovanni, the stock comic character of the sixteenth-century comedies of Italy. This character was the clown or fool’s servant who imitated the master in eccentric style.

This feature was published on August 28, 2004